Health, Disease, and Human Evolution

1 Course Unit

This course will explore the role of human evolution on our experiences of health and disease in contemporary populations. We will evaluate how the human evolutionary forces across the life course shape our experiences of health, wellbeing, as well as both infectious and non-infectious diseases using perspectives from human biology and evolutionary medicine. Related issues to be explored include life history tradeoffs, infectious agent spread in modern populations, and the impact of vaccination on pathogen evolution. In addition, we will discuss complex lifestyle diseases of modernization (e.g., diabetes, cancer) that have increased in prevalence in the past several centuries. Overall, the course will provide a broader understanding of how the processes of human evolution, interaction, and behavior shape disease and health outcomes and provide a novel lens to tackle disease and support human health. 1 Course Unit